Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Thanksgiving from the Ten Commandments

Thanksgiving,
or gratitude, comes, I suppose we would all agree, from the heart.But while for most of us the heart is metaphorically
the seat of feeling and emotion, for the Bible the heart is thought of
differently.There it is metaphorically
styled as the seat of the intellect, passions, and will.I liken it NASA’s “command center.”There our priorities (deepest convictions),
passions (what moves us to act; what Jonathan Edwards called the “affections”),
and practices (what we do) ideally work in concert to bring us integrity.This is that place of integration where we
experience coherence, compassion, and commitment as one in the deepest core of
our being.Here, deep below the surface
commotions and crisis through which we all live, lies joy.And joy is the sibling of freedom.

That
brings us to the Ten Commandments.Here
we discover in this founding statement of Israel’s God this integrity for which
we are all created and in some way or another (sometimes awfully distorted
ways) seek to find.Therein lies the
shape of integrity, the parameters of freedom, and the shape of joy.And all that embraced and internalized spells
“thanksgiving” or “gratitude.”

Here’s
a brief look at them.

Exodus
20

1Then God spoke all these words:

2 I
am the Lord
your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.3 You
must have no other gods before me.4 Do
not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above
or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth.5 Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I,
the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’
sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.6 But I am loyal and
gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my
commandments.7 Do
not use the Lord
your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the Lord won’t forgive
anyone who uses his name that way.8 Remember
the Sabbath day and treat it as holy.9 Six days you may work and do all your tasks,10 but the seventh day is
a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters,
your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with
you.11 Because
the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in
them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.12 Honor
your father and your mother so that your life will be long on the fertile land
that the Lord
your God is giving you.13 Do
not kill.14 Do
not commit adultery.15 Do
not steal.16 Do
not testify falsely against your neighbor.17 Do
not desire your neighbor’s house. Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s
wife, male or female servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your
neighbor.

Everything here begins with God – “then
God spoke” (v.1).These are not our best
and highest thoughts and aspirations writ large and projected on to
heaven.We humans do that
occasionally.They’re called
utopias.But inevitably they turn into
dystopias because they are nothing more than our own best and highest
thoughts.Perhaps after the 20th
century, the most brutal, destructive, inhumane century on record, fired as
much of it was by such “utopic” imaginings, we might be a bit more open to such
a perspective.

The historical prologue (v.2) declares
that God has not only spoken but has acted to liberate his people from
slavery.God’s word and deed join hands
in offering to his people a life that rests in such a God.Here is the priority, the deepest conviction
or priority that entrusts us to the care of this God.The first of these commandments (v.3) then
requires us to order our hearts to God’s word and deed.

In vv.4-6,7,10 we finds the passions
addressed, those energies that move us to act.Such energies, under the right ordering of our priorities, is energy
that impels us to be who God made and called us to be: God’s image-bearers
rather our own image or “idol” makers (v.4-6); to act in God’s name and with
God’s honor, integrity, and reputation foremost in our acting (v.7); and to
order our desires rightly (v.17).

The remainder of the commandments deals
with our practices, both toward God (Sabbath, v.8-11) and toward shaping a
human community that lives from and to genuine freedom:respect for authority, marriage, life, property,
and neighbor (vv.12-16).

Imagine such a community and life
lived this, exploring how to enact such worship of God and respect for the rest
of life in ever-growing ways in ever-more complex forms of human
relationships!

Rooted in an absolute priority of
worshiping the true and living, that is, liberating, God, and driven by the
passions of acting as who we are created to be, for God’s honor, and with
rightly ordered passion, such a life and world become our godly preoccupation.

And when our priorities, passions, and
practices join arms to move us in concert into this kind of integrity, we
realize that all along these commandments have first been promises to us of
what God would graciously do in and among us so that he might command us to do
them confident that we are able to do what he asks!When that realization dawns, well, then our
hearts (biblically conceived) will swell and we will give thanks, true thanks,
to the God “who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask
or imagine by his power at work within us” (Eph.3:20) no matter what our
circumstance may be.